


oh you terrible thing, you

by AnimeDomo



Series: Monster Hunters [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Clubbing, College, Gay Disaster Shiro (Voltron), Grad Student Shiro, Human Sacrifice, Injury Recovery, M/M, Memory Charms, Mind Manipulation, Shiro (Voltron) Has Anxiety, Underage Drinking, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Witch Keith (Voltron), Witches, non-con (in a way), shiro just wants a break, well meaning friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 14:36:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16494503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnimeDomo/pseuds/AnimeDomo
Summary: Shiro's a college hermit with anxiety and deadlines to meet. His well-meaning friends just want him to join them for a night out to unwind from the mid-semester crunch, and he eventually caves and agrees with only minor begging from Matt.He supposes clubbing isn't the worst thing he could do, but - why can't he remember the man Pidge swears she saw him leaving with more than once? Why are the gaps in his memory growing bigger?And why does he always feel like he's being watched?





	oh you terrible thing, you

**Author's Note:**

> So I kicked a skeleton of this idea around for like months now, and I'm not even gonna lie to ya'll, the song "Terrible Thing" they featured in the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina 100% inspired me to actually work with it. I'm a little obsessed with the song rn. I might have listened to it for a couple hours while I wrote this out. Maybe. I don't have a problem you have a problem shut up.
> 
> But honestly 9000% recommend listening to "Terrible Thing" by AG & Brad Gordon while reading. Maybe "Let the Music Play" by Shannon and "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes for a happier note near the beginning.

Clubs were not Shiro’s primary choice of weekend haunt, if ever asked – not that he had much time to contemplate leisure activities lately to begin with.

The previous month had found the grad student hunched over his desk, pouring over research and document upon document with energy drink in-hand. The reference material for his thesis had piled up haphazardly in the corners of his desk but he couldn’t seem to find the time to sort through the stacks beyond finding a passage needed for evidentiary support to actually address his growing clutter issue. He wasn’t even sure the last time he had left his apartment for something other than a class or a seminar or lab hours, with the occasional faculty advisor meeting to discuss his failings sprinkled between the blocks.

And so his life in pursuit of academia had become a disaster. A hard earned, hard fought disaster. But a disaster nonetheless. He didn’t see much of an issue with it, personally.

The stress and late nights were a culmination of what he had worked towards for six years after the darkest time of his life post-enlistment. He wore the dark bags under his grey eyes with a strange sense of pride.

Matt, however, did take some offense to Shiro’s tight schedule and aversion to distractions.

“If you don’t drag yourself out of this cave and come spend time with us I’m going to knock you out and _force_ you to hang out with us.”

Shiro’s college best friend leaned against the open threshold to Shiro’s room, arms crossed over his navy blue button-down and expression stern behind the round lenses of his glasses. He looked a bit like a disapproving parent who just found out their son got a poor grade on a maths test. Shiro looked around his own room quickly, finding no answers to his confusion.

“… How did you get in here?” Shiro twisted in his chair to watch Matt cross the room towards the overflowing bulk that had become Shiro’s closet. He hadn’t found any free time to handle his laundry before throwing it in and out of the washer. Floor piles worked just fine, thank you. 

Matt rolled his eyes, smile a little sly. “You never lock your door.” He toed a pair of khakis aside before stooping to pick up an old threadbare band shirt from Shiro’s undergrad days. Dissatisfied with what he saw upon his inspection, he tossed the red and white shirt aside to begin rummaging through the rest of what Shiro had shuffled together into the “clean pile” on the floor.

“You’re awful dressed up for ‘hanging out,’” Shiro accused. He left Matt to his searching, returning his eyes to the packet of reading in front of him that he had been parsing through before Matt’s over-dramatic entrance. He donned the pair of black framed reading glasses he kept in a pencil holder off to the side and tried to ignore how the small black text swam around the crisp pages in dizzying patterns.

“Allura wanted to get out of the lab for a bit, suggested a club,” Matt explained, up to his knees in unidentifiable pieces of black and brown clothing. “Do you own anything that doesn’t look like it’s from a Hot Topic bin sale?”

Shiro couldn’t stop the heavy groan that burst out of him. “I am _not_ going to a club, Matt.”

Matt appeared next to his desk like a specter, clutching a plain black long-sleeve shirt and holding it out to Shiro in pleading. “Just for a couple hours! Pidge is coming, too.”

“Is Pidge even old enough to get into a club?” Shiro frowned. Pidge might as well have been his little sister, too, the Holts having adopted him early into his lonely college career. While Matt might have been the older brother that taught her how to break into government security and change public records in middle school, Shiro held the role of the older brother who made sure she ate her vegetables and drove within a moderate range of the speed limit when she first got her permit. A much less fun role with far more stress-induced hair loss, but no less loved.

“She’s eighteen,” Matt sighed, dramatic and burdened with Shiro’s questioning. “Besides, she’s been making fakes since she was like, twelve.”

“Matt,” Shiro huffed, firm.

“It’s fine!” The auburn-haired boy flapped one hand at Shiro’s scowling face, throwing the shirt at Shiro’s chest with the other. “Get dressed quick, we’re meeting Allura at the door.”

Shiro set the shirt off to the side. “I _can’t_ , Matt. This assignment is due on Monday and – “

“Shiro, my dude. My bro. My B-F-F. It’s Friday. You have _plenty_ of time to finish it and spend a little time doing something fun for once that doesn’t involve a sale on pocket protectors.”

“I don’t wear pocket protectors, you nerd,” Shiro told him with a light-hearted shove. “And clubs aren’t _fun_ ,” Shiro muttered.

Matt held up two fingers, bright brown eyes wide behind his glasses. “Two hours. That’s all. And if you’re not having any fun I’ll take you home, I promise.” Shiro recognized this look as the expression Matt used when he was trying to sweet talk one of their professors. It always worked. “I feel like we haven’t seen you in months,” he pouted.

Shiro rolled his eyes this time around. “It’s been like two weeks.”

“Three and a half,” Matt corrected. He leaned one hip against the desk, tapping an index finger against a page covered with more highlighting than plain text. “Just two hours. And if you hate it I won’t drag you to a club ever again.”

Shiro hesitated. He knew Matt to be a man of his word, and he truly missed his friend group in the mid-month crunch – but the idea of losing any his project time on something he already knew he wouldn’t enjoy made his stomach knot with anxieties. Perhaps it would have been a bit different if Matt had suggested a night in watching movies or playing a few matches online in the new hero game they had both bought a few months back. But clubs were just muggy sardine cans stuffed full of strangers with wandering hand syndrome. He’d rather just lie in the street if he was being honest.

“Two hours,” Matt promised one more time, hands folded in front of him like he was praying to a deity for Shiro’s cooperation.

He guessed it couldn’t kill him to entertain Matt for a little while. He could always just hang out at the bar with Pidge, the other non-dancer of their tight knit group, and catch up on what she had been up to in the lab with Dr. Holt. And it’d be nice to see Allura again, and if Pidge was there that meant Lance and Hunk would probably show up at some point as well.

"Fine,” Shiro drawled reluctantly with a long-suffering sigh.

Matt cheered – literally jumped up in the air with a fist-pump like a nerd – and snatched the shirt Shiro had tossed aside. He threw it at Shiro’s chest before hauling the taller man up by the elbows with surprising strength. “Go change, Pidge is waiting in the car.”

Shiro dug a pair of half-decent dark jeans out of a separate laundry pile next to his bed. He didn’t bother running Matt out – they’d shared a dorm room for two years. None of Shiro’s insecurities about his scars and the dark metal prosthetic screwed into his right bicep could overshadow Matt’s ability to simultaneously be a supportive friend and not give a single shit.

The jeans had a hole in the left knee and the shirt was a little too tight across his chest and shoulders, dark material stretched thin over the bulk of muscle he had to upkeep to maintain his prosthetic. He mentioned his concerns to Matt, feeling a little too self-conscious with the idea of going out in public in something other than sweats or gym gear – but Matt simply gave him a double thumbs up and shoved him out the front door as soon as he got his boots on.

Katie Holt was in the passenger seat of Matt’s car, a dingy red thing parked along the curb. She was skimming something on her phone with a thin interest but twisted in her seat to cheerily greet Shiro as he awkwardly stumbled into the back seat.

“Wow, he actually got you to join us,” she laughed.

“He’s a wizard,” Shiro grumbled, but smiled all the same.

Matt fist-pumped out the window as he pulled back onto the street. “Hell yeah I am!”

Matt’s driving always put Shiro just on this side of wary – he stopped a little short and had a bad habit of yelling out his window at the slightest inconvenience. But Shiro knew himself to be just as unbearable behind the wheel so he let it slide as they drove south into downtown where the city became a haphazard metropolis and the traffic was a nightmare. They parked a few blocks away in a nearly empty corporate lot, right beneath a “NO TRESPASSING” sign. Pidge muttered that he was a dumbass before hopping out.

They could spot Allura from nearly a block away as they approached – she was the brightest spot on the shadowy street line, even under all the neon shop signs and the pulsing lights from the club windows almost ten stories in total. She waved at them as they crossed the street towards her, the pink of her dress glimmering as she shifted.

“You’re like a beacon,” Matt teased, bumping her shoulder.

“Was worried your blind-ass wouldn’t be able to find me,” she shot back. Her eyes fell on Shiro and she all but jumped into his arms. He caught her easily with a hearty laugh, her own delighted twinkle of a laugh in his ear. “You showed up!” She cried.

“Wow, am I really such a bad friend that no one expected me to come?” Shiro asked as he set Allura back on her white stilettos. She drew away enough to look into his face, one warm hand on his shoulder and expression almost painfully kind.

“Not at all!” She told him, tone firm.

“You’re busy,” Matt shrugged as if it all was so simple. “We’re all pretty busy. Our schedules are shitty.”

“Plus you’ve got practically double the workload the rest of us have, with Slav as your faculty advisor,” Pidge offered. Her eyes were still glued to her phone, thumbs tapping away determinedly. “Can’t believe the department stuck you with that nut job.”

"He’s not a nut job,” Shiro defended half-heartedly with a forced fondness. He was pretty sure he was developing a form of Stockholm Syndrome to survive all the meetings and revisions and long-winded emails. “He’s just…”

“Eccentric,” Matt tried, sounding as unsure as Shiro felt. He knew as well as Shiro did that, given the opportunity, Shiro would probably throttle Slav and leave him in that damn corner office that Shiro had nightmares about. But murdering his instructor wouldn’t get him his PhD in astrophysics.

“Sure, let’s go with that.” Shiro shared a grin with Matt.

The line of people began to shuffle towards the door as some patrons flooded out, and their small group followed. Allura linked an arm through Shiro’s telling him with a charming smile that it was to ensure that Shiro couldn’t sneak away. It was early enough that the wait was short and they managed to get ushered inside within the half hour. The bouncer checked over their IDs with a half-assed glance before waving them through.

Pidge made a beeline for the bar as soon as they passed the entrance. “She’s not old enough to drink,” Shiro muttered to Matt as he watched the younger girl elbow her way to the counter with a fierceness Shiro knew well enough not to challenge. 

Matt rolled his shoulders in a shrug, throwing an arm around Allura before they followed after Pidge. “Fakes,” he reminded Shiro. Allura rolled her eyes, wrapping her own free arm around Matt’s back.

Pidge was seated with a shot of something dark by the time they reached her. Matt ordered for him and Allura, the two both flashing their cards before the bartender slid them their own shot glasses. Shiro asked for a beer – something cheap and light to ease his nerves without sending him headfirst into a toilet or a panic attack. The man behind the counter took one look at the shock of classic-horror white in his hair and the shiny pink of the scar tissue stretched thick across the bridge of his nose, and handed him his drink without looking at his ID.

Matt leaned around Allura to look at Shiro on the other side of Pidge. “Doin’ good?” Matt asked. The two women turned to look at him, eyes appraising. He knew what they were cautious of.

“I’m fine,” he told them firmly over the swell of electronic music. There was a beat drop, the crowd on the shiny dark dancefloor swaying with new enthusiasm as the song picked up in rhythm, and Shiro tried to pretend that the noise didn’t constrict around his chest like a vice.

He didn’t want his nerves to ruin his friend’s night. He had agreed to this, after all. He promised Matt two hours. He could stand two hours.

The song changed, fading into the next in the line up, and Allura gasped prettily as her eyes lit up. “Ooh, I love this song!” She tugged on Matt’s arm with both hands and the bespeckled grad student grinned, completely charmed. “Dance with me!”

Matt tripped out of his seat after her without question. She posed the same question to Shiro and Pidge, but both introverts shook their heads.

“I’m good here,” Shiro told her with a placating smile.

“I’m just here for the alcohol,” Pidge said, saluting the white-haired woman with her empty shot glass. She motioned for the bartender as Allura rolled her eyes.

“Suit yourself. We’ll be back!” The crowd swallowed the two in a frenzy of motion and they were gone, consumed by the beast. Not being able to see them made Shiro tap the cool fingers of his prosthetic hand against the shiny bar top. He had to remind himself to breathe.

Pidge was handing a few bills off to the bartender as he prepared a new set of shots with a bottle of high-end brandy Shiro didn’t recognize. “Want anything?”

Shiro shook his head again, still scanning the crowd anxiously for any sign of Allura’s cloud of white hair or the shine of Matt’s glasses. “I don’t like to get drunk in public,” Shiro reminded her. Pidge clapped him on the shoulder, the thin fingers of her pale hand comically small against the curve of his arm. An unspoken understanding. She had been there during his recovery, after all. She had seen the anxiety, the paranoia, the panic all first hand. He had sworn off anything that could put him under any sort of influence or manipulate his mental state. And pain pills didn’t usually mix with hard liquor, anyway.

Shiro raised his beer bottle to his lips in an absent gesture just as a woman settled into the empty seat next to him. He glanced at her out of instinct and was startled to catch her eyeing him so closely. 

A spill of long blonde hair over her bare shoulders and wide green eyes, heavily rimmed to match the dark colour over her lips. She said something, probably a greeting, but the high octave of her words was lost to the thrumming of music. Shiro panicked for a short moment, internally flailing. He had hoped he wouldn’t need to _actually_ socialize with anyone outside of his friends. With the trophies of his accident painted across his face as plain as day most people veered away from him, the walking horror picture show.

But this woman leaned in closer, eyes flashing as he stupidly asked her, “What?” She seemed to take that as an invitation to press her full lips to his burning ear, repeating her hello and laying a pale hand against his flesh arm. Her expression made him assume she was flirting, and his panic tripled instantaneously. He didn’t know which was worse – turning someone down and potentially hurting their feelings, or trying to make someone understand that he had never been with a woman in his entire twenty-six years of life and had no interest in ever changing that. Not all reactions were kind. He was just a bit of a disaster with people in general, really.

Pidge had turned to lean back past Shiro and catch the unfamiliar woman’s eye, expression deadpan. “He’s not interested,” she snapped over the music. Shiro was rather grateful for Pidge’s declaration of becoming Shiro’s “anti-wingman” when he had come out to the Holts years ago, because the look that crossed the woman’s face was downright venomous and Shiro wasn’t sure he could handle the animosity on his own when he was already trying to balance the sensory overload clawing inside his head at all the flashing lights and pounding music.

She leaned across Shiro to meet Pidge halfway, a challenge. “Who are you? His girlfriend?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Pidge dismissed. She paused to knock back another shot and set the glass back on the bar a little harder than necessary. The woman flinched, subtly. “Fuck off.”

The blonde cast a searching look to Shiro, but he simply took an awkward sip from his bottle – eyes falling anywhere but on the woman until she huffed in offense with a none-too quiet curse and stormed off into a throng of people under the strobe lights.

“You always were shit at dealing with people hitting on you,” Pidge laughed. She was obviously tipsy, high cheeks flushed and eyes a little less sharp. Shiro bumped her foot with his heel in light-hearted reprimand.

"Hush,” he admonished, following it up with a quiet thanks as he sunk a little closer to her. She was a familiar weight against his side, rocking uneasily on her little bar stool. She fumbled the thin glass of her phone from a hidden pocket of her pleated skirt. It clattered to the bartop and she scooped it up with delayed reaction time.

“What are you doing?” Shiro asked. She fought to unlock the screen with her painfully complex security code. A warning text in red blinked at her before she succeeded on her third try.

“Gonna text Lance, see where he is,” she muttered.

Shiro swiveled his stool a bit to press his back against the lip of the bar again, keeping an eye on the crowd for his friends. The song had already bled into something new – something slower, almost sultry and dark, with a heavy bass that seemed to shake the blood in his veins, heart pounding with it. The crowd in front of him moved with the heady rhythm, a slow writhing mass that felt like it was advancing on him. He pressed his back harder into the bartop. 

Pidge spoke again – a drunken slur of what Shiro thought was Lance’s name and something about hot pockets – when he saw it. A flash, but that wasn’t quite accurate. Something dark. Like a blackhole bending the light of stars around it before it swallowed them whole. A shadow that glinted like a blade’s edge and drew his eye. It felt kismet that in that fleeting moment of time his eyes fell on the man across the room, leaning against a pillar with sophisticated nonchalance; a beautiful entity with a mess of dark hair falling from it’s tie, dressed in the deepest black from head to toe. Something silver sparkled against the man’s shirt, and Shiro wondered if that was what had drawn him. But that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what he saw, his heart and mind were both sure of it. Silver and dark were not the same – but the man was staring at him, meeting his eyes now, and Shiro realized that whatever had caught his eye no longer mattered.

The stranger stared for a long moment, and Shiro held no question that it was Shiro himself that the man was eyeing like a mystery to be deconstructed. The knots in his stomach untangled as Shiro caught the man’s eyes and held that strange gaze – he felt as if every atom and neuron in his body had tunneled towards whatever burn of emotion he was now feeling as the other man rocked away from the pillar he had leaned against. But he didn’t advance right away, tilting his head without breaking eye contact. It was then that Shiro noticed someone curled close to the man, head leaned far too close to speak into his ear. He didn’t seem to be listening with very rapt attention. Shiro wasn’t sure he even actually saw the other person’s face – could only focus on the dark eyes of the man watching him, the enticing slant of his shoulders and column of his throat bright like a pale beacon in the shadows of the club.

He thought he heard Pidge ask him something again – repeating his name with drunken determination – but it was lost to the roaring in Shiro’s eyes. Like a man lost to the sea, or left to press himself to the shadows of a dark night he could only feel what he knew to be true; the heavy, slow beat of the song overhead as it continued to drawl from the speakers, the way his own body warmed under his dark sleeves and jeans as the lights above them flickered from a deep amethyst to an alarming red. The neon washed over the stranger like a wave. Sharpening his fine features and casting his eyes as black as sin while he laid one hand against his companion’s arm, speaking into the air between them – but still his eyes called, glittering and sharp like that knifes edge flash – 

There was a shatter as the bottle from Shiro’s hand slid from between his fingers, falling to the hard tile of the club floor into a pile of tinted brown glass shards and condensation and foam. It jarred Shiro enough to catch his attention, his eyes seeking out the mess with confusion. How had he dropped it? Surely he would have noticed if he’d fumbled his drink? He wasn’t that clumsy, he thought.

Pidge was staring at him with open concern, thin brows furrowed. “Shiro? You spaced out. Do you need to leave?”

The bartender barked for one of the boys bringing bottles from the storage room behind the bar to grab the broken glass, and Shiro shifted aside with a desperate apology. “Ah, no,” he continued to Pidge, shaking his head to clear the haze that had settled. “I’m alright. I don’t know what that was. I think I’m just tired from picking up extra tutoring hours this week.”

“Really, if all the noise and people are getting to you we can go,” Pidge promised.

The stock boy disappeared with a broom pan full of Shiro’s beer bottle, and the bartender gruffly asked if Shiro wanted another one. Shiro declined with another apology for the hassle, still a little shaken at how hazy his mind had become with just half a cheap bottle. “I think that’s my cut off,” he joked.

“You were staring pretty hard at something,” Pidge mentioned offhandedly, accepting a glass of water from the bartender as she slid him a bill for whatever she had downed while Shiro had stepped into the Twilight Zone. That jogged his bleary memory and he whipped around to search the crowd for a figure he told himself he’d recognize when he saw it. He couldn’t picture a face in his mind, but he knew he had been looking at someone. He eyed dozens of college students and sloshed businessmen parsing through the crowds and clustering at the booths, but none caught his eye with recognition. Hundreds of nameless, faceless people around him but no one that he could remember.

“I thought I saw someone,” Shiro winced at the twinge behind his eyes. The lights faded to a deep blue that reminded Shiro of an aquarium. It was a weird thought, to feel as if he was on the other side of the glass. “I thought I did, at least.”

“Someone you know?” Pidge asked.

Shiro shook his head, thinking it over for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

Pidge held up her phone, shoving it into Shiro’s face with a bleary grin. “Wanna play Galaga?”

Only Katie Holt would suggest playing video games at a club. He loved her dearly. “You have Galaga on your phone?” Shiro laughed, returning to his seat. Pidge nodded enthusiastically and opened the app. Flicked her wrist and tilted the phone for optimal gameplay. She loaded a new game, motioning for Shiro to move closer to watch. He leaned over her shoulder, watching the little ship on the screen destroy enemy cruisers in colourful bursts of debris. It was simple and familiar and helped him feel a little less like he was free-falling, so he let himself prop against the cable-knit pattern of Pidge’s sweater shoulder. She laughed, elbowing him back, and accusing him of trying to jeopardize her score.

Shiro meant to jab back about how she had never beaten him at a retro game in the six years they had known each other and how it always drove her to immeasurable frustration – but there was tap on his opposite shoulder, soft but sure, and all his thoughts halted like a car screeching to a cliff’s edge.

It was like being struck by lightning in the calmness of the storm’s eye, unexpected and startling and enthralling all at once. A surge of electricity zipping down his spine, tingling and warm and drawing him upright before his mind could even follow the knee-jerk reaction. He spun towards the source and found a man staring up at him, smile somehow coy and confident all at once. A heavy breath fell from Shiro’s mouth – not quite a sigh but something relieved all the same – as he realized him to be the man from before, dressed in all black and staring from across the room. Now before his very eyes, close enough for him to reach out one gloved hand and trail it down Shiro’s hidden prosthetic as if he knew what lay beneath the layer of fabric. Was seeking it, even. 

The gaps in Shiro’s memory flooded with the heat of that gaze, warm and slow and unbearably sweet like burning molasses. Like it was almost too much, this emotion flowing through Shiro’s whole being and leaving him gaping, in a haze. The stranger watched him closely, eyes dark and heavy. But so close Shiro could see the blue hues, deep and enticing. His smile grew, canines sharp against the swell of his lower lip.

He was lovely, Shiro dreamily decided.

“Dance with me?” A question, a plead. It nearly broke Shiro’s heart, to hear this man he’d never met sound so hopeful – but he wasn’t sure why exactly his heart sung to quell the shyness in the man’s voice, to tell him that he was wanted – that he could take as he pleased. Still, he surged forward without answers, propelled by his desire to draw that dazzling smile from the stranger again, and captured one of his gloved hands in both of Shiro’s own, heedless of the cold metal most others recoiled from. He held the stranger’s hand and he couldn’t remember why this place had agonized him so. The man laced the exposed fingers of his captured gloved hand between the chill of Shiro’s prosthetic digits and Shiro’s heart beat so hard he thought he’d collapse in cardiac arrest right there.

The man grinned, presumably at Shiro’s enthusiasm, and began to draw Shiro into the crowd. _Vixen_ , Shiro’s mind supplied drunkenly. Shiro couldn’t find it in him to be embarrassed at his eagerness, or to find panic in the walls of unfamiliar bodies pressing against him as he was led to the shiny black dance floor, or worry at leaving his best friend’s little sister sitting at the bar alone. 

The stranger guided Shiro like a siren leading a sailor to run aground – quick and sure and smiling. And Shiro, like a sailor lost to the jetsam, followed the man like the blazing north star. They were so deep into the gullet of the building that Shiro could no longer see the bar, or remember why it had been important that he stay there. How could it be important when the stranger he had been searching for was standing in front of him, drawing Shiro’s hands to the thin dip of his hips as they began to follow the crowd’s rhythm.  
The song bled into something deep and sensual, and Shiro wasn’t sure what had been playing just moments before. It felt right to press close, both hands sliding into the back pockets of the man’s jeans – just on this side of too tight – and cling to the swell of his ass. The stranger swayed, seemingly pleased, and continued guiding them as he pressed their hips together and _moved_. Shiro stumbled stupidly at the friction, trying to follow his steps even as something molten stirred within his core and he panted into the muggy air of the over-crowded dance floor. 

The stranger turned to press his back to Shiro’s chest and lace his arms behind Shiro’s neck. The movement lifted the hem of the man’s shirt and Shiro’s own hands sought the burning warmth of the skin there, gripping a little more roughly than he intended. Shiro thought the man perhaps made a noise at that, pressing his ass back against Shiro and grinning like a satisfied cat at the hardness he found there. Shiro, unembarrassed, followed the man’s lead with a grin of his own.

The crowd seemed to give them a wide berth and Shiro didn’t question how the room seemed to move with them, accommodate them. Just knew he was grateful for it, and for the chance to keep the handsome stranger against him and watch the array of neon colours change with their movements without disturbance. The lights fell over his high cheek bones, the smooth curve of his lip and cupids bow, the sweaty and tangled mess of dark hair he had pulled back into a bun, still falling forward into his face.

The man turned back and slid his feet forward, planting them beyond Shiro’s centre of gravity and letting himself sink back towards the floor in an impressive dip that hiked his dark shirt up to almost his chest. There was no hesitation in the movement as he let his full weight fall – completely sure that Shiro would catch him. And catch him he did; with trembling hands he planted the cool prosthetic against the burning skin of the man’s bare lower back to steady him, and he made an expression torn between surprise at the touch and absolute ecstasy. The sight left Shiro’s mouth dry and he was suddenly well aware of just how tight his jeans felt with the arousal he felt at such a simple encounter. He couldn’t remember ever wanting someone on such a physical, visceral level. 

Any lovers he might have taken before this moment seemed to be bleached from his mind. Replaced with only this image, this moment, this one man. And he stared, dumbfounded, as this handsome man arched his back into a dramatic curve that only reminded Shiro of someone in the throes of being well fucked, and knew then that that was what he wanted, what he needed.

Shiro hauled him back to his feet, frustrated with his own lack of grace compared to the stranger, but the man didn’t seem to mind. Rather, he lurched forward with Shiro’s momentum and fisted both hands, still partially covered in the black leather of his biker’s gloves, into the collar of Shiro’s simple shirt. The material twisted and stretched under the strain, baring the cut of Shiro’s scarred collar bones. The man eyed them briefly, and Shiro was aware on some obscure level of pulsating lights and a change in the tempo, but then the man’s eyes flicked back up to his and Shiro’s attention tunneled down once more.

The stranger’s nose slid past his, their faces so close that one misplaced jostle from an inebriated passerby would force them together. And he wanted it – god, did Shiro want to close that gap. He could imagine moving forward, claiming that small space that separated them, of taking this man home and letting him ruin Shiro. He wanted to know if the man tasted the same way his stare settled into Shiro’s bones – that slow, sweet burn. He wanted to take him apart piece by piece and make him beg and scream. Wanted to know what he’d look like spread against Shiro’s black sheets with tears in his eyes and a plea on his tongue while Shiro fucked him within an inch of his life with a desire he didn’t think he’d ever felt in his entire life.

But he couldn’t move. Every muscle of his body froze as though he was held back by a taught string wrapped around every bodily fiber to hold him upright. One hand still nestled beneath the back of the man’s shirt on the small of his back and another frozen against the side of his head, fingers tangled gently – almost lovingly – in the falling ebony locks. The man looked resigned and terribly sad.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he told Shiro, firm, a whisper above the din, and somehow Shiro was convinced that did break his heart. He wanted to hold on tighter and beg – because he knew that was the man’s way of saying goodbye. He’d never met this handsome stranger a day in his life, yet he knew exactly what that pained look in his eye meant and it sent Shiro’s own blood running cold. Like losing a life-long partner, a lover he had dedicated himself to and worshiped like a deity.

“No,” was all Shiro could manage, pleading, desperate, before the other man muttered something to himself too low for Shiro to catch over the water-logged sound of club music in his ears. He leaned in as if to meet Shiro in a kiss – 

Everything came into sharp focus so quickly that a burst of pain behind Shiro’s eyes was the first thing he could actually register. He closed his eyes, holding his head in his hands and willing the nausea to settle. The music was louder than he remembered, the bass vibrating through the floor and shaking him where he stood rooted to the spot. The song was something pop-y and upbeat and new, but hadn’t they just been playing a slow jam only moments ago? The lights above the dance floor and the booth section kept flashing, unconcerned of Shiro’s plight – and when the fuck had he gotten on the dance floor?

The panic set in quickly; there were so many people on all sides, too many people, and he couldn’t find room to breathe. He began to count backwards, trying to time his panting breaths, as a few drunk girls brushed by him and giggled, stumbling away.

“There you are,” there was a sharp tug on Shiro’s shirt sleeve and he turned to find Pidge staring at him, red in the face and swaying on her feet but looking no less concerned because of her blood alcohol content.

“Oh, Pidge,” he sighed gratefully and fell against her as she began to lead him out of the mass of drunken dancers. It took a few tries to find the right direction, and they ultimately decided on tripping their way into an empty booth in what Shiro vaguely remembered to be the direction of the entrance. It was marginally quieter when he wasn’t standing directly under the speakers. It almost felt like he could potentially think again.

“What were you doing?” Pidge asked. She folded her hands on the table and waited patiently as Shiro pressed his thumbs to his eyes as if it would quell the splitting migraine that had taken up residence. She was holding herself up very well for a woman almost under five-foot with approximately six shots of brandy in her system. No one could say that Katie Holt couldn’t handle her liquor, at least. Matt would be proud.

“I don’t know,” he told her. But he wasn’t entirely sure that was truthful. He just knew he couldn’t think through the spikes and waves of pain cracking his skull open. 

“Hey!” Matt popped out of the crowd with a grin until he got close enough to see Shiro’s face. He knelt at Shiro’s side, settling a warm hand on Shiro’s shoulder. It was comforting. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

Allura appeared as well, approaching from the side with a glass of something neon blue. He watched her face fall just as Matt’s had, setting the glass to the side and watching the way Shiro shielded his eyes from the lights lining the booths. Shiro felt himself wither in guilt for ruining his friend’s evening, but the overwhelming sense of needing to vomit and _breathe_ in air that wasn’t sixty-percent body sweat and thirty-percent booze was winning.

“I think I need to go home,” he muttered, curling in on himself with an overbearing sense of regret coupled with his splitting migraine.

Pidge took the passenger seat in the car again so Shiro could spread out in the back. Allura had gone her own way, begging Shiro and Matt to let her know if they needed anything.

“I only live four blocks away, after all,” she reminded them. Shiro knew Allura just wanted to help in any possible way, but he felt awful enough that he was pulling Matt and Pidge away from their night and he didn’t want to ruin Allura’s too. So he insisted she stay and have fun – find out where Lance and Hunk were and catch them. Don’t worry about him. She didn’t fight him, but she’d looked solemn. He didn’t think she stayed after their departure.

Matt was driving a little more carefully this time – he didn’t want to lay on the horn every time some upstate douchebag cut them off on the freeway and risk antagonizing what Shiro now knew wholeheartedly to be a migraine. Matt suggested taking Shiro to the Holt house to be looked after, but Shiro begged to not put his parents out – and his medicine was all at home anyway.

Pidge was tinkering with her phone upfront, tapping away at something, when she suddenly turned to look at Shiro pressing his forehead against the back window and looking grim. “Hey, who’d you run off with?”

“What?” Shiro lifted his head just enough to look at her face. The flush of alcohol had died down and her eyes could focus on his face for more than just a few seconds. She seemed a little more clear-headed.

“Earlier, when you went to dance. Who was it you went with? I didn’t see their face,” she explained.

Matt guffawed from behind the wheel. “Shiro? _Dancing?_ ”

“I’m being real,” she punched Matt in the arm before turning back to Shiro. “I couldn’t remember earlier but I definitely do now. I was playing Galaga on my phone and when I turned around you were walking off with someone.”

Matt gave Shiro a panicked looked in the rear-view mirror. “You didn’t drink something someone gave you, did you?”

Shiro waved him off, head still pulsing. “I just had my one beer at the bar. Didn’t even finish it,” he muttered.

“Someone from campus?” Katie pressed.

Shiro tried to remember. Truly he did. But every time he tried to imagine a figure leading him off to the dance floor all he saw was flickers and blurs, like a distorted film reel disintegrating before his eyes. The pain in his skull spiked and he pressed his temple against the cool condensation of the window again. Pidge watched him warily.

“Yeah, probably,” he agreed though he knew it wasn’t right. Something in his heart clawed – a caged animal fighting a restraint. Every time he tried to imagine the moments between sitting with Pidge at the bar and finding himself adrift in the middle of the dance floor – a solid chunk of the hour lost to his foggy memory – he was met with what felt like a brick wall, except this brick wall hit back.

He just wanted to go home, take his medicine, and crawl into bed for the rest of the weekend.

“Yeah,” he told her a little more confidently as Matt pulled off the freeway. The lights of downtown disappeared beyond the crest of the valley as they descended. “I’m sure that’s what it was. It doesn’t matter.”

_I should have just stayed home._


End file.
